erratic touchpad when AC charger is plugged

Hi guys! i have a strange problem with my inspiron 14 N4050. When I plugged in the AC charger, the touchpad does not work properly. Sometimes it moves and sometimes not eventhough I have moved and touched the touchpad. When I disconnect the AC charger and reboot the system, the touchpad works perfectly fine. Can anyone give me advise on this? thanks in advance

Same problem with my old Inspiron 6400. Brought home a newer Inspiron N4010 from the office and just by chance plugged it into the old charger that was already on the desk. Same problem. Tried the N4010 charger on both Laptops the touch pad works on both. So I assume it is the charger that needs a replacement. On all laptops we use Linux.

Same issue here! New laptop and new AC adapter. What's weird with mine is that my touchpad is only erratic when my AC adapter is plugged in on one side of my house. If I take the laptop and the same adapter and plug it into an outlet on the other side of my house, then it works fine. Until I did a Google search and seen that there a lot of people experiencing this problem, I thought maybe my house power might be hosed up.

Like everyone else though, when it's not working, it works fine all the time on the battery.

Let me know if Dell ever decides to find the real root cause to the problem and fix it!

I have found this to be common with several brands of laptop, especially with the cheap Chinese adapters sold on Ebay. You can either use a USB mouse or try adapters till you find one that works. If the adapter came with the laptop, demand a new adapter from Dell. If buying another, try to get a genuine adapter made for that particular model. You may fix it by earthing some external component of the motherboard. For example, touching the serial port with one hand may earth it sufficiently for the touchpad to work but this is impractical. The problem lies with the design of the adapter. I recently had an Inspiron which had this problem with the PA-10 adapters sold on Ebay; correct voltage and current and even listed as suitable for this model. Only the correct model specified by Dell for this model laptop worked.

Mine was erratic as soon as it was booted up to LINUX (version didn't make a difference). At first I thought it was a software bug, but it turned out to be the non-DELL power adapter, brand name, "CBD", I had my e6400 plugged into. If the power adapter was disconnected the cursor worked perfectly. I had a second "CBD" and tried it with the same result. Threw both away. With a DELL power adapter everything works just fine.

"I know you think you know what I said, but what you need to know is, I didn't say what I meant" PEACE